Kent Conrad: “Mr. President, this is a bipartisan amendment about feeding hungry people. This has always been a bipartisan priority in…”

“Mr. President, this is a bipartisan amendment about feeding hungry people. This has always been a bipartisan priority in this Chamber. The father of the Food Assistance Program is Senator Dole, the former Republican leader, and former Senator George McGovern. Our amendment, a bipartisan amendment, preserves the most important feature of our Food Assistance Program. It maintains the automatic adjustment in funding to respond to economic downturns or natural disasters. A pure block grant would leave States with a fixed amount of money no matter what happens. If we look at the example of Florida, we see very clearly what can happen. They had a flat demand for food assistance. Then we had a national recession, and demand for food assistance increased dramatically. Then there was a natural disaster, Hurricane Andrew, and the demand for food assistance exploded. Under the pure block grant, that State would have had no ability to respond to the demand for food assistance. No block grant could have responded to this increase in need. The block grant would destroy the Food Stamp Program. Mr. President, America is better than that. This Senate is better than that. I hope my colleagues will support the amendment.”